FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Four years after Fort Wayne and Allen County combined emergency dispatch operations, the merger’s missing partner continues to present the greatest threat to its success.
While emergency calls for the city, county and IPFW are routed to the 911 call center in the Rousseau Centre downtown, any calls requiring an ambulance dispatch must be forwarded to the Three Rivers Ambulance Authority complex a mile away on Hayden Street. It’s an unnecessary and troublesome hurdle to emergency response – one that might not have cost lives yet, but certainly could.
Sheriff Ken Fries, long a critic of the 911 merger, continues to point to problems with the new consolidated operation center. He told The Journal Gazette’s Jeff Wiehe that the millions of dollars spent to combine operations haven’t improved dispatch operations, pointing to a recent armed robbery call relayed over Fort Wayne Police Department channels as an example of a missed communication with the Allen County Police Department.
Read full story: Ambulance dispatch complicates coordination